HORSEMEN OF THE ROBOPLASTIC APOCALYPSE

Monday, June 16, 2014

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful convention trip! Castaway with the Nostrodomatron on a thirty minute tour, a thirty minute tour as I set sail for the second floor of the Bahia Mar hotel on Fort Lauderdale beach to attend Hukilau 2014! It's a robotastic hukilaucalypse as I mingle amongst the hula skirts and tiki shirts on a quest to get a certain masterpiece of mine scribbled upon by the Leonardo of line and luaus, the Michaelangelo of mai tais and marker-the coolest cat this side of Wildsville! And along the way I spend a couple minutes talking to a Transformers fan only slightly less controversial than Michael Bay! What does all this tiki stuff have to do with a certain angry robots comic book series from 1993? Why did I take a toy Lamborghini to a Tiki convention? Find out all this and more in this I DON'T BREAK THE HULA GIRLS, I BEND THEM A LOT edition of the podcastalypse!

I tried to blend in as much as possible in this tikified environment but a man is only able to remain so inconspicuous while carrying around a toy robot Lamborghini and a couple issues of Transformers Generation 2. It turns out that I ran into a couple of Transformer fans at the show! One huki dude saw the Masterpiece G2 Sideswipe I brought and recognized it as the same character he had when he was a kid. It was kind of surreal as I was able to have a toy robot conversation surrounded by hula girls and totem poles. It was pretty trippy. I didn't record that one but I did get a couple minutes of audio when I ran into Tom Croom, who is rather well known for his online review of Botcon 2010 that caused its own roboplastic apocalypse in the Transformers fandom. I didn't ask him about Beast Wars or Botcon because we all know where he stands on those by now.

Then it all came togther when Transformers Generation 2 artist extraordinaire Derek Yaniger showed up and I got him to sign my Masterpiece G2 Sideswipe! Mr. Yaniger made an appearance at the Hukilau as a guest of the Harold Golen Gallery in Miami. Of course he wasn't there promoting his old comic work but he was instead debuting a new print he did of Bunny Yeager who recently passed away. Mr. Yaniger left his comic work behind him in pursuit of retro art and tiki culture illustration so he wasn't aware that Takara Tomy made a figure inspired by his G2 comic art. It was a real blast to show it to him. It was equally awesome to get him to sign my box, making it in effect a "Yaniger Signature Edition MP-12G" (although I'm never quite sure what those words he writes actually mean).